What is the Best Day to List Your Home?
According to Redfin, a real state brokerage firm, the particular day of the week that you list your home for sale can seriously impact how quickly the home is sold, and even whether a seller gets top dollar.
Redfin analyzed a sample of 100,000 homes sold in 2017. According to the study, putting a home on the market on a Wednesday will yield the most money. Homes listed for sale on a Thursday sold the fastest, with Sunday being the worst day to list. Sunday listings remained on the market longest and sold for the least of any day of the week.
Using Sunday as a baseline, homes listed on a Wednesday sold for $2,032 more. This represents a sale to list premium of 0.53%. So, for a home listed at $500,00, this means that the seller would make $2,650 more just by listing on a Wednesday instead of a Sunday.
For speed, Thursday sold an average of 5 days quicker than a home listed on a Sunday.
While it isn’t entirely clear why Wednesday produces the highest price, or why Thursday wins on speed of sale, Redfin theorizes that, “Possible explanations include that agents who list on Wednesdays tend to be better at pricing strategically to command the best price.” Another possibility is that, “In this fast paced, low inventory market, there’s simply a sweet spot for garnering the maximum sense of urgency and competition among eager homebuyers.” Redfin also believes a possible explanation is that the advantages of Wednesdays and Thursdays simply correlates to buyers’ house hunting schedules. “
Serious buyers typically start making their weekend house-hunting plans late in the work week,” said Redfin Denver based agent Karla Kirkpatrick-Adams. “You want your home to be one of the fresh listings buyers see pop up as they decide which homes they should see over the weekend.”
It’s also important to keep in mind that homes get five times more online views the day they hit the market than they do a week later. “You only get one shot at making a first impression’” adds Karla.
So perhaps homebuyers get serious in their search in the later part of the week, and the homes they see freshly listed on those Wednesdays and Thursdays are making the strongest impression 3 or 4 days before their weekend house search begins.
In any case, the subtext of the Redfin study is that it makes sense to leave as little to chance as possible, even something that might seem inconsequential - the day of the week that you list your home for sale.